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US Drone Strikes Kill Nine in North Waziristan

A pair of US drone strikes destroyed a house and a vehicle in the Shawal Valley of Pakistan’s North Waziristan Agency today, killing at least nine people, including four who officials say may have been ethnic Uzbeks.

The Uzbeks were said killed in the US attack on the vehicle, though officials conceded they haven’t actually confirmed this, and that the ethnicity of the victims was just something they heard.

The other five people killed are totally unidentified even nominally, though officials say they believe the house destroyed belonged to a leader in the Punjabi Taliban.

Still, they have no idea if the Punjabi Taliban leader was in the home at the time, or indeed if it was even his people who were hit. The US has been picking up the rate of drone strikes in Pakistan in recent weeks, a sore spot in US-Pakistani relations, though most recently Pakistan has been mum on the attacks.